The Deadly Impact of Government-Run Healthcare in the UK 10/20/12 by Dan Mitchell

Its still very interesting - I suppose if I lived in Portsmouth I wouldn't be too happy. No I wouldn't want the US system I've seen how the very poor cannot even get treatment for chronic illnesses like diabetes. But having said that - the NHS has a hell of a lot to be improved, management heavy, groundworkers light has been the change over the past 20yrs - hundreds of managers and the most antiquated MRI scanner in the world at our local hospital which covers a huge area of Manchester (and only 1 for which there is a 3 month waiting list) - why in this day and age should that be so?
We should be getting more for the bucks we put into it, too much wasted money

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I believe that there has been a huge investment in MRI scanners recently and waiting lists have plummeted over the last couple of years.

If I had the money I would pay for private care. Those I know here with Bupa get far far better care than those of us on the NHS. I've seen private care close up and it outstrips the NHS by a long way.
What I saw as a nurse over 16 years in the NHS would make your eyes bleed. Bed shortages that resulted in me making deals with the police to keep patients in cells overnight; lack of proper medical care. Elderly patients refused basic care.
Patients left and left until they did something truly dreadful and got sectioned.(A child nearly died!)
Patients sent home, desptie nurses concerns, who then committed suicide.
I had to work with managers who could barely manage to put milk in their own coffee but were all over anyone trying to improve standards of care.
None of you want to see what I had to see as a nurse, especially those days and nights I was in sole charge of the whole hospital while the oncall manager (who was paid while I wasn't) was out shopping when I bleeped her!

I've had a friend sent home from A&E told she had nothing wrong. They refused the x ray. In the end when she returned again and again they found she had broken her foot.
A neighbour x rayed and sent home with the all clear who had in fact broken her arm. It took over 10 days for someone to get on to this.
Two of my friends have elderly relatives who have been refused antibiotics for simple infections. Thankfully in both cases my friends stood their ground against the docs and the elderly rels in question are doing fine.
If the US system really is as bad as this, then God help them. But from what I've seen of my US friends, even Medicaid isn't quite as bad, and those with insurance get very good care over all.

My own experience of having a seizure in a hospital corridor because the ambulance crew had to wait with me was harldly great either. I've lost two other people to NHS cock ups and callousness. I've lost patience with it all.

Frankly, I don't give a monkey's about politics, then as a nurse or now as a patient. All I wanted as a nurse was to be allowed to offer good care and as a patient to get a modicum of respect. Neither happened so far.

Sorry if this sounds angry, but I am sick of people covering up for the failures of the NHS which are system wide. We wont change anything while we treat it as a sacred cow.
Perhaps I',m extra sensitive as it's the anniversary of a death that happened thanks to an NHS cock up. Another one!

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My experiance of private care is that you get much the same consultants just nicer waiting rooms. Remember when things go wrong in an operation at a private hospital in the UK they have been known to send people to casulty.

I think we have a real problem in the UK with the attitude of Drs. One really big issue is that no doctor is allowed to critisie another however dangerous they may be.

From my recent experiences there is a huge difference in standards between different wards within the same hospital.

No, but it all depends on the costs.
Some types of private health care might be cheaper in the UK, because you can chose to opt in or out of the NHS for specific treatments.
So a comparison of total taxes paid by an individual, plus the insurance costs, needs to be made, before a fair comparison can be made.

Even so, the comparison can not be made purely by costs. The NHS is the ultimate medical insurance scheme. It's there from birth to death, for whoever needs it, even if you lose your job or you retire. It also includes unlimited psychiatric & long-term treatment. And the NHS doesn't exclude people with existing conditions. So the comparisons are not straightforward or simple.

If I had the money I would pay for private care. Those I know here with Bupa get far far better care than those of us on the NHS. I've seen private care close up and it outstrips the NHS by a long way.
What I saw as a nurse over 16 years in the NHS would make your eyes bleed. Bed shortages that resulted in me making deals with the police to keep patients in cells overnight; lack of proper medical care. Elderly patients refused basic care.
Patients left and left until they did something truly dreadful and got sectioned.(A child nearly died!)
Patients sent home, desptie nurses concerns, who then committed suicide.
I had to work with managers who could barely manage to put milk in their own coffee but were all over anyone trying to improve standards of care.
None of you want to see what I had to see as a nurse, especially those days and nights I was in sole charge of the whole hospital while the oncall manager (who was paid while I wasn't) was out shopping when I bleeped her!

I've had a friend sent home from A&E told she had nothing wrong. They refused the x ray. In the end when she returned again and again they found she had broken her foot.
A neighbour x rayed and sent home with the all clear who had in fact broken her arm. It took over 10 days for someone to get on to this.
Two of my friends have elderly relatives who have been refused antibiotics for simple infections. Thankfully in both cases my friends stood their ground against the docs and the elderly rels in question are doing fine.
If the US system really is as bad as this, then God help them. But from what I've seen of my US friends, even Medicaid isn't quite as bad, and those with insurance get very good care over all.

My own experience of having a seizure in a hospital corridor because the ambulance crew had to wait with me was harldly great either. I've lost two other people to NHS cock ups and callousness. I've lost patience with it all.

Frankly, I don't give a monkey's about politics, then as a nurse or now as a patient. All I wanted as a nurse was to be allowed to offer good care and as a patient to get a modicum of respect. Neither happened so far.

Sorry if this sounds angry, but I am sick of people covering up for the failures of the NHS which are system wide. We wont change anything while we treat it as a sacred cow.
Perhaps I',m extra sensitive as it's the anniversary of a death that happened thanks to an NHS cock up. Another one!

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Fair points, Shell. I've had some very good and some very bad experiences. And my friends have had some very good and some appalling experiences. My parents have been well looked after, with a range of medical issues.
My last job was on the nursing team of a local hospital, and my wards were well managed, with top quality staff.

The reason that I'm defending the NHS is because I value it, but I agree that it lets us down in many ways.
Give me a better and cost effective system, that treats everyone equally, and I'll go with it.
If the UK system had equal funding as the US system, then I'm certain that it would surpass the US system, in terms of quality and efficiency.
But funding is a political issue, rather than being purely based on need, so it's always short of funding.

1) the bullshit that ALWAYS occurs in *any* system we build
NHS is huge, ergo more bloat, more places for scum to hide, etc

as I've noted elsewhere, one issue that conspires, literally, to make such worse, is that inept, criminals, etc in systems go out of their way to push out the decent ones, due ot jealousy, fear of exposure etc

2) Yes, the british medical establishment, that is for doctors, is Victorian, arrogant, smug, self righteous, know it all know nothings.
One reason Dr John Bodkin Adam's mass murders were covered up was because the BMA was threatening to leave the NHS!
Adams, and many other private doctirs knew/know the "rich and famous" who've had illegal abortions, sexually trasmitted diseases, child abuse cover ups, given drugs illegally, and so on.
It's "Jobs for the Sick and twisted boys"
Of course, not all docs are bastards, from experience I'd say 1/3rd are genuinely great, 1/3rd are just "coasting" and 1/3rd are incompetant, bigots, scumbags or worse.
Was a fantastic doc here who helped me, only one who did, he was even filmed because of his skill at
*great just f'ing GREAT I can't even think of the word for....working out what is wrong with a patient, OMG I HATE THIS ILLNESS! tkaing my health was bad neough but wrecking my memory is obscene *
sigh, anyway he was great, but because he was a Moslem of Iranian parents etc he got crap, apparently not just from the local low lifes but I suspect from other docs.

And American relatives have experiences of bad issues there, too.
As noted for many years, grossly or criminally negligent docs would move state as there wasn't a national system of tracking doctors.

Shell,
I've explained before how one doc's incompetance cost me the guy who was more of a father than my actual one.
Plus all the other crap I've seen from 'em.
And one had sexually molested my mum and two other ladies who told me of such over the years, the doc thought he could just fondle them when naked doing medical exams and make lewd suggestions/desires and it was ok! ****** creep! he got away with it because he was the "senior partner" a minister of the curch and a psychiatrist as well.
you know how it goes, "Women are just lying sluts, horny and make up stories like that but oh no I never touched them!" (that's how they brush aside such accusations) Grrrr!!
See the current scandal about Jimmy Saville. Well there's a surprise, not!!! Ugh!!

Britain, the country that brought the world penicillin, has come to this. Dr. Fleming would be laughed at, ignored, kicked to the curb by cynics, I would suspect. Cloud of pessimism has descended on British medicine. The patients get the brunt of this.

BTW in Atlanta I met several British docs who have made the translantic switch. They were very discrete about bashing the system whence they came. But they were happy in positions here. Of course they were paid more, and worked in a system that was inherently unfair to the uninsured.

"Regular checks on doctors' skills will start from December, heralding the biggest shake-up in medical regulation for more than 150 years."

"The UK's 220,000 doctors will have annual appraisals, with a decision taken every five years on whether they are fit to continue working."

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Doctors should be checked even folk stacking shelves in the supermarket have appraisals now infact very few jobs dont . Over the years ive seen some very good nhs docs and some very bad ones im not just talking myself here but through my kids and other people ive had to take for medical care and through my job working with severley disabled children .

I think the biggest problem in the NHS is cost cutting at grass roots . The money should be going on equipment , nursing staff , doctors , cleaning and drugs not on bloody managers who sit on their arses in flash offices who have no clue what happens on the wards or in a&e and yet draw an annual salary that would make many doctors and nurses weep . The money is being wasted before all these management posts came about hospitals seemed to run like tight ships . The staff were respected and woe betitde you got on the wrong side of the matron . cleanliness was close to god not now ive been in some hospitals and theyve been right shit holes . Even things like clean sheets and toilet rolls in the loos are not always readily available .

Now a lot of staff are being brought in from foreign countrys to save money thats all well and good if they know how to do the job but its not very good if they can barely speak english which is the case with a lot of foreign staff I have seen lately .
In this country there are a lot of regional differences with language even though we all speak english so someone coming here to work would need to be able to speak english as if it was there first language and not their second . I was trying to explain my sons very long and complicated medical history to a nurse from somewhere like singapore she did not have a clue what the hell I was on about after half an hour of trying to make her understand we had to demand to see someone who understood . Cost cutting like this costs lives how can you be treated if theres a communication barrier ?

These problems have all arisen since privatising a little bit here and a little bit there and its only going to get worse . my local hospital trust is in serious debt we joined up with another hospital trust worst thing we ever did we inherited their debt . Now my local hospital is under threat of loosing its a&e how ironic . its a complicated system where i live the hospitals that joined with us are actually a different area so we pay our taxes to one council yet most of the hospitals in the trust come under a different council which means if our a&e shuts folk will have to travel miles to get help . What angers me the most is they can find money for paying umpteen managers , new flash buildings with designer curatins and furnishings yet things which should be priorities like nursing staff and even something as simple as the antibacterial gel for the hand dispensors are often missing .

The Nhs was great it could be again if they stopped with all the undue wastage and spending and put the money where it was actually needed

cleanliness was close to god not now ive been in some hospitals and theyve been right shit holes . Even things like clean sheets and toilet rolls in the loos are not always readily available .

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Not the NHS but one of the main states Australian Hospitals when I was admitted there last year (admission before my last one), I was horrified at the lack of cleanliness of the respiratory ward I was in (it was like being in a third world hospital). One of the patients got shit all over the room toilet floor (there were 6 beds in the room only 4 filled), this shit stayed on the floor for hours.. I ended up having to ask TWICE before a nurse cleaned it up (first one I told just left it). The nurse just wiped it the worst of it with loo paper (no disinfectant) and one could still see the shit marks where it had been over the floor.. (so I was having to attempt to walk barefoot around all the shit splatters.. but I know i was stepping on some of the spots...it was discusting).

While that toilet was a mess I tried a toilet out of the rooms but still in the ward, but this toilet had a blockage and was fill to the brim with toilet wastes and was overflowed over the floor. 3 days later, I went to use that toilet again as someone was in our rooms toilet.. to my shock it was exactly in the same state as it had been 3 days earlier.. with exactly the same poo as before floating on the surface about to go over the rim. Im still shocked about how that ward was in its cleanliness... how can a public toilet in a main hospital ward be left like that for 3 days? Ive spent a lot of time in hospitals over the years but never came across a hygiene situation as bad as that ward before and that was one of our states main hospital

Now a lot of staff are being brought in from foreign countrys to save money thats all well and good if they know how to do the job but its not very good if they can barely speak english which is the case with a lot of foreign staff I have seen lately .
In this country there are a lot of regional differences with language even though we all speak english so someone coming here to work would need to be able to speak english as if it was there first language and not their second .

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We get a lot of foreign doctors here in Australia too. I had one one time who Im sure didnt know medical basics.. she was like doing the whole consulation as if she was a robot programmed to treat everyone who went in to see her exactly the same no matter what they were there for.. eg lets look in ears, check the heart, look in the mouth etc etc.. she was doing things not all all related to what I'd gone to see her about.. I hadnt gone to her for a cold or ear issue (it felt like a play exam that children do while playing doctors and nurses).

"The UK's 220,000 doctors will have annual appraisals, with a decision taken every five years on whether they are fit to continue working."[/quote]

I remember seeing this last week Bob and wanting to laugh - anything that makes them quake a little in their comfy chairs behind their little desks, anything that stops them being smug and arrogant for a few minutes or hopefully for the week before the appraisals is fine by me. Will it improve their performance? I would like to think so but???? And the money it will cost to do the appraisals, who will do them, retired doctors? More pay in addition to the £68000. The NHS is truly the system to retire from isn't it? Beats the £6500/7000 pension that the average working man gets.

Basically in 2006 there seemed to be a median wait of around 5 weeks and this has fallen steadily till about 2008 and since then there has been a median waid of just under 2 weeks.It suggests things have improved.

It would be interesting to know how this breaks down be region. I suspect some areas have got much more funding than others or some are later in the roll out of new machines.

The Daily Mail extract is meaningless - it makes no reference to patient selection i.e - who is considered 'safe' to be operated on. It only requires a minor shift in age/frailty/disease progression profiles, to increase mortality significantly.

The only way to make reasoned comparisons of different health care systems is to look at broad outputs as well as inputs. The basic output measure of any health care system is age adjusted mortality (AAM), on this measure, despite having a much lower per capita income and traditionally a much lower spend on health care, the UK has an AAM that is subtantially lower than that of the US. Even allowing the proclivity of US citizens to shoot each other, allow their children to play with deadly weapons, and to drive at each other in murdeous fashion, all with more enthusiasm than the Brits, the relative AAMs suggest an excess 500,000 deaths annually in the US compared to the UK. Far from being 'deadly', on the AAM figures the UK health system is 'protective', to the extent of reducing annual mortality by up to 100,000 premature deaths per year when compared to the US.

Thanks for that user9876 - I've tried to have a look but my eyesight is not too good today, I'll see if my hubby can make it larger on the screen for me.
I have to say it was probably the begininning of last year that my friend went for her scan - but since then no-one has offered her an open scanner or a larger unit.

Tania
when my mum was a nurse, they cleaned the wards
very hard life, too hard, but the wards were spotless.

Nursing staff shouldn't be doing cleaning, for bunch of reasons but as said, when you make it minimum wage external private contract cleaning staff...
much better ot have local people, on site, public service, make sure they know that they and their families lives depend on cleanliness if they ever come there.

IVF
yeah, as I've mentioned elsehwere, things like negligent docs skipping states and still being able to practice, the incredible rise of the abuse of prescrition drugs (see number of celebrity deaths as being tip of iceberg that's killing way more thna illegla drugs), lack of a clear national system etc etc
USA has best and worst of it.

User9876
when my ME got worse and they checked me out for brain/breast cancer, only took 2 or 3 weeks to get an MRI scan and others (ultrasound and xrays), here.

Many well meaning, competant folk in NHS
but yes bloated by managers, but you need managers for such hugely complex system...but that's more room for corruption/incompetants, etc

Somethings the private sector is simply not good for, health care is one of them, it's too open to abuse (see the pharma corps and what's happened ot us) and too vital.
Would you want private cops, private military...same thing.

NHS though could do with vastly more openeness,
broken into far smaller " regional units" with own budget so less top heavy bureacracy,
easy way to fix the issue with docs is slash their pay BUT, make their education free (retroactivley too) provided they stay and practice in the UK for at least 10 years destroy the BMA, and set up independant monitoring system.

we want/need more folk to take up "beneficial" jobs instead of pissing it away in the City, vast number of motivated, bright people have turned their backs on science, medicine etc, for $$$ and in doing so, wrecked our economy.
(banking etc are needed, but they became ocmplete parasitical monstrosities, folk who should have been making medical, engineering advances etc ended up creating bullshit "financial products" that had no true existance, sigh)

that's another issue with the NHS
new hospitals such as one near me, were built with the "PFI" system, which will cost the tax payer twice as much as it would have versus normal funding, AND leave private companies owning the buildings!
Balls to that.

NHS though could do with vastly more openeness,
broken into far smaller " regional units" with own budget so less top heavy bureacracy,

easy way to fix the issue with docs is slash their pay BUT, make their education free (retroactivley too) provided they stay and practice in the UK for at least 10 years

destroy the BMA, and set up independant monitoring system.

we want/need more folk to take up "beneficial" jobs instead of pissing it away in the City, vast number of motivated, bright people have turned their backs on science, medicine etc, for $$$ and in doing so, wrecked our economy.

I'd like to add there seems to be some sort of "trench warfare" going on - my local (rural) practice of 6 GPs carried a message in lights to the effect that abuse verbal or physical was zero tolerated. Similarly in large notices when taken in for scans at a large London teaching hospital. One can assume it can happen rarely (eg drunks in A & E) but when ill and meeting watch out warnings is none too encouraging. What about the majority who couldn't anyway.

And another rural practice carries a notice "no more than 3 symptoms at a time" !. So presumably one is left to think now what can I leave out. Little wonder the complexites of ME are so confusing for them,

Thanks for that user9876 - I've tried to have a look but my eyesight is not too good today, I'll see if my hubby can make it larger on the screen for me.
I have to say it was probably the begininning of last year that my friend went for her scan - but since then no-one has offered her an open scanner or a larger unit.

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I think that waits for the open scanners are much longer I don't think there are many around.

And another rural practice carries a notice "no more than 3 symptoms at a time" !. So presumably one is left to think now what can I leave out. Little wonder the complexites of ME are so confusing.

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You've got to laugh haven't you - now which of my symptoms are worse today?!!
With regards to the 'abuse will not be tolerated' notices and also one about drug users not being given methadone or something - hugely dominating the room.The first time I ever saw one was when I moved to this area, its on the outskirts of a big city.
Of course they shouldn't be abused but the people that do the abusing, do they care about notices?
But what message does it give the patients in the waiting room, we really care about your health or we really care about our own welfare? Oh and the 'have your vaccinations here for which we'll charge you a small fortune notices'!!
Mine is not a welcoming place, rude, arrogant receptionists, others who don't like being disturbed in the middle of a social conversation, and GPs who look bored most of the time during the consultation. Sorry here I go again...................

horrible as it is, I'm wondering if this scandal with Jimmy Saville will, together with Hillsborough, "phone hacking", expenses scandal of MPs etc, finally crack open the sick pervasive secrecy and snobbish class culture crap of this country?
and thus, help us, because it plays a large part in keeping M.E. bottled up, secret and lied about.

For those not familair with UK, Jimmy Saville was a very famous celebrity, a DJ and his tireless work in charties was hugely popular, fact that he often worked as a HNS hospital porter (wheeling patients around etc), added to his appeal and "humanity"
while not proven yet, accusations are that he molested hundreds of young girls, some while paralyzed in hospital, and he used bent cops or used the threat of his charities being damaged by exposure, as means ot cover it all up. His chaorty work being means of finding victims and having "social leverage" so that folk wouldn't believe victims.
AND, from other stuff I know of over the years, sure fire bet if true, that many rich/powerful folk were involved with such, too

PS
please forgive nasty bit above, but that IS how scumbags blame the victims, I just don't "beat arund the bush" on such crap, sigh.
with sexual molestation of women scumbags often say things like: "they're just sluts who came onto me!" as way to avoid admitting guilt and to weaken support for the victim
with us: "death threats!" "they're just attention seeking hypochondriacs" etc
make the "crowd" see the victim as the wrongdoer or muddy the waters, and they pass on by as you abuse someone...
Old tactic that shouldn't be acceptable.